Busy

So its been awhile since I've blogged...I've been busy and I guess just not really in the mood to blog.  Last weekend I went to Romania for a National Theatre Festival and it was really good.  We saw Endgame, Measure for Measure, and Alcoholics - one of Andras Visky's plays.  They were all really well done but none of them were in English.  We had headsets with translations but I found that I was so focused on hearing the words I couldn't focus much on the artistic value of the performance, which I really missed.  But I guess that's what happens when you're at a Theatre Festival in Eastern Europe.  I also got to see two shows in Budapest at the Katona Theatre and they were sooo amazing!!!  We went to see The Wild Duck and Ivanov, both realist plays by very well known playwrights.  All the actors were incredible! It was in Hungarian but there were times when I just forgot that I couldn't understand what they were saying.  Both lead roles were played by the same actor. He had so much power! The shows had been running for awhile on rotation so the ensemble atmosphere was so tight! Everyone's timing was bang on.  Ivanov was definitely my favorite of the two.  It was done with more comedy than I would ever have imagined!! We were all busting a gut! I sincerely wish I had a recording of the performance, every character was so alive and had their own humor and I love realism, especially Chekov, who is the playwright of Ivanov. 

But lately I've been working on final papers and getting ready for exams.  It's actually pretty stressful, doing so much work and also trying to get ready to go back home.  We all have so much on our minds! The other day I was going to get some work done all afternoon but instead I had 3 really great conversations with three of my apartment mates, all completely out of nowhere and all really great.  Some of us are really ready to go home and just counting down the days and others aren't homesick at all and are not really looking forward to leaving.

I can't wait to come home.  As I said before I will miss some things here but I miss way more things back home.  I'm just so excited for Christmas break when I can just spend time with the people that mean the most to me and not worry about anything else.  I'm a little more nervous to go back to Calvin though.  It's going to be so strange to go back to a place that is so familiar yet so busy and full of so many people. I don't think I can explain it fully, but I'm interested to see what the transition back will be like.  A lot of people say that it's hard to break back into you're group of friends but I don't really have a group of friends I consistently hang out with, more like a bunch of individual relationships, which I feel like won't be as hard to pick up. I'm going to be so busy catching up with everyone though!! I'll be drinking lots of coffee and tea in the month of January, that's for sure. I wonder how quickly I'm going to get tired of summarizing my semester.  I want to talk about different things each time so it doesn't get repetitive for me but that's going to take a lot of work.  I think it would help if people thought of specific questions to ask rather than "How was it?" , which I realize is kind of hard to do, but if those of you reading could think of some better questions, save them for me, I want to hear them and answer them!!

Work and play

Hey everyone! So I know it's been awhile since I've posted, but that's because my life has been pretty uneventful in the past two wees (excluding this weekend).  I had two final papers due this past Tuesday and Wednesday so I spent most of my time writing those.  At first I was planning on working in the library across from one of my schools but that didn't work out.  It's a really nice place but they don't let you take your backpack in with you, which is kind of annoying if you have notebooks, a laptop, cord, converter, etc.  So I started going to the coffee shop just down the street, which turned out to be the perfect paper writing place!! It's really close, there's no smoking (so my computer won't wreak of smoke like last time I worked at a cafe), the music is not distracting, the coffee is good, and it's really nice to be a regular somewhere, at least for a short time.  It's such a cute place.

So that's what I was doing all last week, except for the evenings when I would give myself a break.  One night I went of a walk across two of the bridges with Leesha, Kyle, and Dan.  It was so nice to spend some time walking around parts of Budapest I normally am not around.  By the way, if you want to become a little more familiar with who I'm here with, go to this blog site.  Leighanne, who's a photographer, did a blog post on all of us, it's pretty sweet.  http://papercranessilverrings.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/all-of-them/ 

So after spending so much time on homework, I decided this weekend would be completely dedicated to doing things on my to do list before I leave.  I started with going to see the first showing of Harry Potter in English Thursday morning.  A bunch of us dresses as characters, and in since I currently have short blonde hair, I decided to be Malfoy. I borrowed black dress clothes from Robert and his white tie and Leighanne's black vest, it was awesome! Surprisingly, there weren't too many people there.  The theatre was hardly half full.  But it was still really awesome.  After the show we rushed back home to start getting ready for American Thanksgiving dinner!!  We all made something and invited a few friends, plus some people visiting from the US, and crowded into our "living room".  There was a lot of food! It was really nice to have a large gathering or people we knew and just hang out.

 

Can you guess who we all are?!

Thanksgiving!!

The next day I was planning on going to see Obuda with some friends,which is the older part of Budapest with ruins, but I slept in and by the time we were ready to head out we decided it would be better to go the next day so we would have more time. So we went to the Christmas Festival instead.  The Christmas Festival is this huge event that happens all over the city at different squares.  People set up a whole bunch of booths and sell all kinds of things.  I think it's all made in Hungary and most of it is hand crafts.  And there's lots of food there too! They have these pastries here called chimney bread, where they wrap/spiral dough around a wooden spool and then cook it over a fire and cover it with cinnamon or chocolate or whatever. They are soo good!! They also have small stages where people will perform folk dancing or songs.  We went to the main square and I saw a bunch of older women dressed in traditional Hungarian clothes performing this duet.  I couldn't tell what they were saying but there was definitely some bantering, going back and forth in groups and insulting the other.  It was amusing even without being fully understandable.

That night I just hung out in my room and we made snowflakes and broke out the Christmas music and then it started snowing!!!!  It was prefect!!  They were huge flakes that stayed on the ground really well!! We still have a little bit on the ground and it's supposed to snow again on Wednesday.

On Saturday I woke up a little earlier and headed out to Obuda with Robert, Tanya, Brandon, Abby, Kyle, and Dan.  We had a guide book that gave us a route to walk so we followed that.  We started with the Roman amphitheatre and it was so amazing!!  The entire base was still there and one raised section with seats, including two cells that were used to hold prisoners or animals.  It was mind blowing to be standing on something that existed around the same time of Christ.  I think it might be one of my favorite places in Budapest. We continued on the tour and saw a few more Roman ruins and other older buildings while trying to stay warm.  At the end we stumbled upon another section of the Christmas Festival.  It was much smaller but there were people doing folk dancing on a stage and a bunch of booths and an ice rink!!

That night a few of us were invited to a Euchre night by a family we met a the church some of us attend.  Their names are Chris and Debby Gibson.  They are missionaries from the US and have been in Budapest for about 7 years.  One of their daughters goes to Calvin.  They had invited us to dinner a few weeks back and then invited us to Euchre as well.  It was so much fun! They had invited a few of their friends so we had a bit of a tournament.  I normally don't like playing Euchre because people get really competitive and I'm not very good, but this was much more chill.  I partnered with a girl named Sarah, who's my age and helping her mom teach grade 3 at an international school.  She had never really played before so we just took it slow and had a good time.  We first played Arielle and Justin (a post-Calvin student now teaching in Budapest) and we spent the first hour just talking and eating with our card laying untouched in front of us.  It was so nice to just relax and have fun and meet new people.  Debby had a bunch of oranges with cloves stuck in them all over the house and we each designed our own orange and took them home; they smell soo good! Our room had been having a bit of an odor issues lately but it smells so much better now!

Tonight I finally made it to the Opera House.  I went with all my roommates to see a ballet, it was really cute! The story was about a young girl who was in love with this hansom man but her mother was trying to force her to marry the son of the mayor, who was really awkward. Of course in the end the girl marries her lover and everyone is happy.  The choreography was really neat.  The characters that were supposed to be awkward did a really good job of combining it with their ballet.  And they used streamers a lot, which was very creative.  We didn't have the best seats, we were on the highest balcony on the far left side but if we stood up we could see most of the stage.  We only paid $2.50 for it so that's pretty legit.  After that I went to a chocolate cafe with three of my roommates.  It was really cozy, kind of geared toward couples but there was another group there so it wasn't too awkward.  On the way home we started singing carols, yay Christmas!! 

So this was a pretty awesome weekend!!  Tomorrow I'm going to sleep in a bit and then go on a date with Leesha! I'm pretty excited!

Bosnia-Herzegovina

This past weekend I was in Bosnia-Herzegovina in Sarajevo and Mostar and I learned so much! For those who don't know, from 1992-1995, Bosnia-Herzegovina was being attacked by the Serbian Army, I'll go into more detail later on. We took a tour of Sarajevo for most of Friday and our guide was really amazing.  She lived in Sarajevo during the whole war except for the last 5 months when she experienced psychological trauma to the extent where she could no longer walk.  It was really amazing to hear her own stories. Most of what she remembers is staying in basements. Each neighborhood had their own school so the kids didn't have to go too far. She would run to school and back each day. She talked about one time when a bomb hit close to the school and the teacher hid under the desk before checking on the kids.  It's something she can laugh about now. But she also remembers one time when instead of one of her class mates coming to class there was a red rose on his desk. Most kids were kept in basements for safety.  One time in the winter a group of 6-7 yr olds were allowed outside to play in the snow and a bomb hit the yard they were in.

The war started after many countries started leaving Yugoslavia.  The Yugoslav army decided that Sarajevo would be a good place to practice war techniques because it is in a valley surrounded by large hills and they started to siege the city.  This violated some type of agreement, I don't remember, so to get out of the responsibility they changed their name to the Serbian Army. Our guide talked about how the war was started by politicians. They went to Serbian cities and convinced the people that the Turks had wronged them 500 yrs ago when the Turks had occupied the area and that the Serbs needed to take revenge by attacking Bosnia-Herzegovina.  Our guide said that many Bosnians don't blame the Serbs because they were uneducated and tricked by the politicians. They do, however, have a lot more tension with the Serbs who lived in Sarajevo and joined the army in the hills.  There were times when when two Serbian brothers would have different ideas about the situation, one would go to the hills and the other would stay and they would meet each other while fighting.

When the war started, Bosnia had no organized army because it had just left Yugoslavia.  Yet the people of Sarajevo fought back with whatever they could find.  Some had guns, some made their own fire arms and bombs, and sometimes they would fight back with only a knife in their hand.  Fortunately the Serbs had a hard time using their tanks because of the hills.  It's amazing that the people of Sarajevo were able to protect the city for the entire war.

The Serbian Army was surrounding the city all around except for the airport.  They had an agreement with the United Nations that the UN could use it as long as no Bosnian stepped foot on it.  This was a problem because on the other side of the airport was a war free area that had more food and weapons.  Sometimes Bosnians would risk the run across the airport but they would hardly ever be able to avoid the snipers.  To get rid of this dangerous trek, the Bosnians built a tunnel under the airport.  It was 800 meters long, 1 meter wide, and 1.6 meters high.  Only soldiers or those with special permission were allowed to pass through.  Most people that were given special permission were sick or wounded, like our tour guide, who passed through it when she experienced psychological trauma. The doctors in Sarajevo said that she needed to have surgery or else she would die but they did not have the tools for it so she had to leave the country.  Fortunately she had an Aunt living in Turkey so she went to stay with her.  When the doctors there looked at her they realized it was from stress and all she needed was from fresh air and exercise, which turned out to do the trick.

 

 

Map of Sarajevo during the war.  The pink is where the Serbs were and the gap is the airport.

Walking a short way through the tunnel.

Our tour guide said that many people experience some kind of post-traumatic disorder after the war.  Many people don't talk about what they experienced in the war but she thinks that will change as people realize it can be healing to share.

Another story she told was of Sarajevo's Romeo and Juliet.  They were a young couple in love, one Bosnian, one Serbian. They wanted to leave Sarajevo to get married so they asked for safe passage from both sides.  Both sides knew the couple and agreed.  But as they stared their trip someone shot.  They boy died first and the girl crawled over to him and died in his arms.  Their bodies stayed where they were for three days before someone dared to retrieve them.  Neither side knows who shot.

The war ended in 1995 but I still don't understand quite how it happened.  A treaty was signed but I want to know why it only happened then and what kept it from happening earlier.

Our tour guide gave us a really great commentary of what the people of Sarajevo are like.  Sarajevo is a really old city made of 3 sections: the Ottoman section, the Austo-Hungarian section, and the Communist section, each built when these different powers were occupying the city.  Our guide said that people don't resent the cultures that came to the city but they welcome them and enjoy taking small parts from each culture. They also have 4 main religions: Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox.  Each religion lived intermingled and in peace.  Sarajevo is the only city to have 4 main buildings of worship within 300 square meters.

Another really important part of their culture is coffee.  They drink Turkish coffee, which is really strong and they drink it in small amounts. They have coffee sets with small cups and special containers for the coffee and a sugar bowl.  These sets are made of metal, often silver or copper.  Many of them have intricate designs and they are usually hand made.  Apparently the unemployment rate is around 50% but people somehow find the money to have coffee possibly 2-3 times a day.  It is a very social part of life, you never drink coffee alone.

The main street where copper products are sold, including the coffee sets.

There is still a lot of corruption that goes on unfortunately. A lot of money was given to Sarajevo to rebuild buildings that were destroyed but the money ends up in politicians pockets.  Sarajevo has a rule that any building that is restored must be restored exactly as it was before so that also prolongs the process. Also, they have 3 Presidents. One Croat, one Bosnian, and one Serb.  They rotate being President every 8 months and the others act as Vice Presidents.  They are supposed to agree on every decision but that rarely happens so it is hard to make progress.

Another thing that brought a lot of frustration is the role that the United Nations played in the war. They were present during the entire thing but rarely intervened. I realize it is a complex situation and I don't fully understand it but I can also understand the anger that the Bosnians feel for having the UN soldiers just watch what went on.

One of the worst situations happened in a city called Sebrenica.  This was the location of a UN camp and a war free area.  That meant that both sides were told to give up their weapons.  The Bosnians did but the Serbs did not.  In 1995 the Serbs took the city.  In 5 days over 7'000 men disappeared.  They were unarmed because the UN would not return the weapons they gave up.

I want to recognize that the information I heard and and posting here is one side of a complex story and is not the whole thing.  Some of you may have heard other opinions.  I just want to share what one woman in Sarajevo experienced and shared with me.

I think what hits me the hardest is how recent this all happened.  Our tour guide is Taryn's (my sister) age and she remembers what went on.  Justin (my brother) would have been the same age as those kids that were playing in the snow.  That could have been my family.  I don't know how the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina live day to day having experienced so much pain and rage that is still with them.  I guess we do what we have to.

Cemetery and hills of Sarajevo

Mostar, another city we visited that is in Herzegovina

Transitions

I absolutely love being here now.  It's strange because for the first few months or so I was pretty home sick and trying to settle in and I had all the time in the world.  But now that I am settled and really just enjoying myself, time seems to be going way to fast and I have so little time left.  There are going to be a lot of things that I will miss when I leave, like sour cherry pop, great public transportation, new things to see everyday, living with 9 amazing girls, and cheap food and alcohol.  I think the thing I will miss most of living is such a wonderful city.  It's big and there is lots to do but it's not crowded like the big cities in North America, there's room to breath here.  It's going to be hard going back to London and Grand Rapids, where there isn't a lot to do in comparison.  But there are a lot of things that I am looking forward to when I come back, mainly seeing everyone again and catching up with them.  But I definitely want to come back here some day.

Things I still need to do in Hungary:

v  Go to the opera

v  Go to the spa and get a massage

v  See Harry Potter

v  Go to Simpla

v  Go to Pecs

v  Go to the hot chocolate place and art palace near by

v  Go to Buda Hills

v  Go in the Labyrinth

v  Write Postcards

v  Date with Leesha

v  Date with SarahJean

Croatia

So after saying our goodbyes to our lovely visitors we headed off to Croatia.  Well, we actually didn't reach Croatia the first day, but that was our final destination.  The first day we took our time reaching our hotel, stopping along the way to see different churches in small villages and hearing their stories.  We stopped at one village that Calvin students had planted walnut trees years before and had tea and really good pastries.  Once we reached our hotel we ate a huge dinner and went to bed.  The next morning we took that short drive to the Croatian border. Our first stop was the Batina Monument to commemorate the Battle of Batina, in which 30 Nazi soldiers held off thousands of Red Army soldiers trying to cross the Danube because the Nazis were positioned on the hill, giving them a large advantage.  They were able to hold the Red Army off for two weeks. It's interesting because in Croatia and Serbia the Soviet Union is not seen as something that was immensely evil because they were not occupied by the Soviet Union.  They were able to chose what kind of communism they wanted.  We spent a lot of time there just looking around the area.  It was on a hill and you could see the Serbian and the Montenegrin boarder on the other side of the Danube.  Then we went to see another church but it was locked up so we had fun looking at the million frogs hopping around.

One of the churches we visited.

Batina Monument

The View

Next we went to a church service for Reformation day in a village one of our guides lives in and then spent 3 hours eating lunch.  It was awesome!! We had soup and then meat and potatoes and then desert.  There was an older man sitting a little ways down from me talking to the students around him.  He didn't speak English but he managed and he was one of the happiest people I've seen.  Once he got some one to translate for him and said that if everyone was as happy as him, the world would have no problems.

Sharing a meal.

Once we finally pulled ourselves away we went to a park with an old hunting castle a Hungarian princess liked to use to get away from her family.  It was really beautiful there and we had fun throwing leaves around. Then we visited another church but it was a bit different of an experience.  The church had some kind of construction being done and the whole yard had been cut down by about two feet.  In the yard there had been bodies from the wars buried there and some of the bones were dug up and laying in the dirt.  It was really strange because it didn't really creep a lot of us our right away but now that I look back on it, it was very strange to be looking at the bones of people that were dug up.  I don't really know quite what to think of it.  Apparently no one in the village cared about it, our guide said that they have so many bodies here that it doesn't really matter what happens to these ones.

Castle

We went on to see another church and the pastor was there to tell us more about it and then he invited us to try the wine and walnut liqueur that he makes.  I wasn't crazy about the wine but the liqueur was really good! And he turned out to have a lot of other kinds of liqueur he wanted to share with us, such as apricot schnapps, some kind of herb liqueur, cherry stuff (which was amazing and definitely my favorite), and even some absinthe. I think it safe to say we all had a fairly easy time falling asleep that night, except for the fact that the car Robert was driving with Tanya, Leighanne, and I started to steam right at the border and we got be towed back to the hotel by one of the vans.

Push starting the car on the way, I didn't blog about it, but here's evidence.

The next morning we crossed the border back into Croatia, no towing needed, and headed to the city Vukovar.  In 1991 there was a war in this area between the Serbs and all the minorities in Yugoslavia because the Serbs wanted an independent state.  Vukovar is right by the Danube and therefore a very important city for the Serbs to occupy. So Vukovar had Serbs attack them from across the river but also Serbs within the city started to attack the city.  Needless to say, a lot of damage was done.  One of the monuments from this war is the water tower.  It is right by the river and covered in holes and very damaged.  There was a playground at the foot of the water tower and it included a marry-go-round that I still do not understand how it ride successfully.  You face the middle on the seat but there is no back so the centrifugal force pushes you off your seat! We tried holding each others hands but that didn't work very well and resulted in me being thrown onto the ground, much to the amusement of everyone, myself included.

The Water tower.

The merry-go-round of death.

After that we went to a cemetery that had half of it dedicated to soldiers who fought in the war.  There was a monument and also a area of white crosses to commemorate the soldiers that were never found.  It was really busy that day because one of the ways people in that area celebrate Halloween is that they put fresh flowers on the graves of their loved ones and light candles.  Every grave had at least two bunches of flowers.

The monument in the middle of the cemetery.

We then went on to a bigger city in the area and just wandered around for about an hour.  It was also right by the Danube and had a little bit of a beachy area.  And another play ground! But this one had exercise machines that were fun for kids! It was pretty sweet and something every country should adopt. One thing that was interesting to see was all the abandoned buildings.  Every so often we would come across buildings that were in complete ruins with plants growing all around and inside them.  It was like a constant reminder of what had happened in the area not too long ago.

Damage done by the war.

The exercise playground.

An abandoned building.

Our last stop was a small village that our guide had been the pastor of right after the war.  It is a Reformed community that was evacuated during the war and the village was completely destroyed.  The people living there were in refugee camps for about 7 years and then were allowed to return to their village only to find it pretty much gone, except the church.  Despite this immense fall back, every one in the village returned to rebuild it.  Now it is doing fairly well but the youngest person living there is 45 because the young people that grow up there never stay.  We attended the beginning of their church service and it was strange to see the people who's story we had just heard.  The very joyful man from lunch the other day was one of these members and had been through all of it.  I am amazed at the strength these people have shown and I wonder what will happen to the village in the next 30 or so years.


And so we started our trip back home.  We stopped in a city to have dinner at a pizzeria, which was ok.  Then Tanya bought some roasted chestnuts from a street vendor and I got to find out what they tasted like.  They were actually pretty good! I couldn't eat to many of them, but they are significantly better than raw chestnuts.

And that was Croatia.  In about a week we're heading off to Sarajevo for the weekend.  As I was re-reading this I realized how awful of a writer I am, sorry about that, you will just have to tough it through.

A landmine we passed, there are many.

 - I must give the credit of these pictures of Robert VanZanen and Tanya Adams, I forgot my camera so I had to rely on them.

Awesome week!

Happy Halloween everyone!!  We threw a Halloween party last Sunday night and it was great! It all started because Arielle (one of my close friends here) was talking to one of her Hungarian friends who told here that Hungarian try to celebrate Halloween but don't really know how to do it. So we decided to show them some of what we do back home.  We all invited people we knew from class or other random places and we had a pretty good turn out.  I invited a guy from my religion class and he brought one of his friends, they were both really funny.  They brought a squash to carve instead of a pumpkin, and it worked! We all made a lot of food, baked goods, candy, snacks etc. We had games and a photo booth and awesome dancing.  Kalie's mom sent her a big package of Halloween stuff like decorations and little toys so we used all of those.  It was all a lot of fun!

After we all partied it up, we had to buckle down and get some mid-terms done.  I had a paper to write and a mid-term to study for, both of which went pretty well.  I spent all day (no joke, all afternoon and then back in the evening) at a tea house on Tuesday studying.  It was a really great study atmosphere but I've discovered that drinking a whole pot of tea by yourself is not the best idea since it gets cold by the time you reach the least cup and you have to pee a million times in a row. But I'll still definitely go back there when I need to do some hard core studying.

After I wrote my mid-term on Monday morning, the plan was for me to go to the airport to pick up five US students studying in Romania at the time who were visiting Budapest.  One of them is from Calvin and was in one of my religion classes so we planned on hanging out and having them stay with us for a few nights. So I got to the airport and looked at the flights coming in and I didn't see any coming from Romania, all from Italy or London.  That seemed rather strange to me so I went to the info desk and asked if there were any flights coming in from Romania in the other terminal, maybe there had been a mix up.  There were indeed a few flights coming in to Terminal 2 from Romania so I made my way over there and waited, praying that they would be in one of those flights.  Unfortunately, they were not.  I was getting rather stressed by now as I made my way back to Terminal one, hoping I would find some what of figure out what was going on.  I got back there and started to look around and was incredibly relieved to find an internet cafe! I got online and looked again at the info of their flight and saw (for the first time) that they were flying in from Milan, which had been one of they flights coming in at the correct time into the correct terminal.  I also saw that Kelly, the one from Calvin, had messaged me saying that they had arrived but did not see me and would probably head over to my apartment soon if I did not appear.  Knowing that they were ok and probably in a better situation than I was I headed home.

Unfortunately this was not the end of my stress because I was supposed to have been back at the apartment by 3:30 and I would now be arriving around 6:30, which means that many people would be wondering where on earth I was, especially since the people I was supposed to pick up had arrived before I did with no news of me.  Luckily, I arrived just in time to stop Robert and Tanya from going out to look for me and to receive an enthusiastic greeting with a large pinch of scolding on the side.  But I had made it home and was not kidnapped or anything else awful like that, and I finally got to meet the people I had been looking forward to meeting all day.

The next day went much more smoothly.  I spent the whole day with the Romania group, taking them to some important areas in Budapest and we had a great time! It's really cool how much more you start to appreciate where you live once you get to show it to someone else.  We went to a lot of different places and I think they really enjoyed it.  That night we went folk dancing at a club, which was very fun, but very exhausting and difficult, and we didn't have the energy to keep it up for too long. We headed back pretty early and just hung out in the kitchen, having energetic conversations about the awesomeness of Lost and other things.  Apparently Inception is the best film known to man!

So that was the business/funess of my week.  The next morning we headed off to Croatia, I'll talk about that in my next post, which is coming really soon.

Ukraine

This past weekend I was in Ukraine with everyone else and I think it was my favorite class trip so far! Transylvania was a lot of fun but we were still getting to know each other and Poland was a more serious trip.  In Ukraine we were really close and enjoyed ourselves a lot and got to invest more in the places we went.  We stayed at a high school run by the Reformed Church there.  They have hotel like rooms at the school just for visitors! There's a Calvin grad teaching at the school for a year so it was really nice to see her and I'm sure it was nice for her to see some familiar faces.  We took a train into Sárospatak on Friday and looked at the Reformed school there, which is very old with a lot of history, and the castle in the area.  We also had lunch and dinner there.  That night we went to a wine tasting in an area renowned for their wine.  We tried four different kinds, all very good, but the last one was the best.  It was a really special wine that requires a lot of work and is crazy sweet.  King Louise tried it once and called it the king of wines and the wine for kings.  I don't know what kind of wine kings like, but I would have to agree with the general idea of how good it is.

First Reformed School

Wine Celler

Really good wine!!

We arrived at the school that night rather late and were all really ready to be in warm beds, sleeping.  It was pretty cold again, just like Poland, but we were more prepared this time.  The next morning we headed off to visit a Gypsy community that one of our guides has been working with to improve the living condition.  As we walked through, the kids started following us and we reached the end of the street where their playground was and spent 2o minutes just playing with them.  It was so much fun!!  It's awesome that you don't need to speak the same language as someone to play with them, it's universal.

Playing!!

That afternoon we visited another high school by the Reformed church and spent time telling each other about our schools.  Most of the people we visited are ethnic Hungarians and continually living with that tension.  In the past some odd years, Ukraine has had their nationality changed 5 times, which is crazy.  We also did a workshop with the students at the school we were staying at, which was a lot of fun, even though they were kind of shy.  We had dinner there and then watched a documentary about the Gypsy communities in the area.

The next day we visited an orphanage built by a Dutch man, I can't remember his name.  During the Communist Regime orphanages in Ukraine were really horrible.  They were really dirty with awful living conditions which led to underdevelopment in the kids.  This happened in Romania as well and when the Iron Curtain fell the orphanages in Romania got a lot of press and a lot of relief was sent there.  Unfortunately, the orphanages in Ukraine were revealed later and didn't get as much press or relief.  But there have been a group of Dutch people that have been working with Ukraine and one group decided to try to improve the orphanage situation.  They tried sending materials but that wasn't working because the materials wouldn't make it to the kids because the workers at the orphanages would keep the stuff for themselves or sell them.  So they decided instead to built an orphanage to show how they should be properly run.  And this place seems to be very well run!  They grow veggies and have a bunch of animals and keep bees and bake bread...it's pretty sweet.  It's not self sustaining, but that's because it's really tough for places like this to become self sustaining in Ukraine.  But it seems like a really great place.   They only take girls and are at their full capacity right now.  They also take girls with disabilities who's parents can't take proper care of them.  It's was interesting being there because orphanages often have a really depressing connotation and it feels like we're supposed to be really sad, but this place is not a place to be sad about.  The girls have definitely been through a lot but they are in a great place now.  And they have a sweet playground!!!  They have a trampoline dug into the ground (very smart, less broken arms), and a zip line, and a small merry-go-round!!  We only got to play on it for like, 5 minutes:(

The Orphanage

After tearing ourselves away from the awesome playground, we ate lunch, which was really awesome  (as most food is on these trips).  Then we went to a church service in another Gypsy community.  We got too see a few baptisms and they asked us to sing something so we sang My Friends May You Grow in Grace.  Then we saw another high school really quickly and headed to the train station that would take us back home.  The train ride was 4 hours and I was sitting beside my friend Kaile and we were soo hyper!!  It was a lot of fun!!

Gypsy Church

So it was a pretty awesome trip.  Now I'm working on getting ready for mid-terms, figuring out my classes for next semester, doing some of the many things I want to do here etc. Time here is starting to go really fast!!  And all us Calvin students are throwing a Halloween party this Sunday cause we're going to be in Croatia next weekend.  We're inviting all our friends from here and it's going to be really sweet!!  I'm going shopping with some friends tomorrow and I'm hoping I can find something that will work for a costume.